


Unpinned Grenade

by bioticbootyshaker



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8432629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticbootyshaker/pseuds/bioticbootyshaker
Summary: Mercy kills.
At least, that's what Aric Jorgan believes.
After watching his captain let Tavus walk after his defection, Aric confronts his CO.





	

    “Had an old CO that liked to say mercy was like an unpinned grenade,” Aric said, his sudden presence in the doorway to his cabin making Kadin start. “Either it was a dud, that wasn’t worth much good, or it was gonna blow your arm off. Never really understood that much, ‘til I saw you letting Tavus walk.”

    “Jorgan---”

    “ _Sir_ ,” Aric bit, and because he was still new to the role of command, Kadin bit his lips, an angry flush burning on his face, and stayed quiet. “Figure what my CO was saying was that mercy doesn’t have much use in war. It doesn’t accomplish much, and usually it just ends up getting people hurt. You let that traitor go, after everything he did, for _information_. You go ahead and ask dead men what that _information_ means to them.”

    He was pissed, of course he was. He’d been betrayed, stripped of his rank, made to endure embarrassment, used as a scapegoat by a Republic Army that saw him as an expendable number on a roll of paper. Kadin could feel the sullen energy coming off of Aric, and he understood, but that didn’t mean he had to sit there and take his admonishment quietly. 

    “You ever talk to that CO the way you’re talking to me now, Jorgan?”

    “No, sir,” Aric said. Well, at least he was in the mood to be honest.

“You have some complaint with the way I handle things, file it and send it back to SpecForce on Coruscant,” Kadin snapped. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Listen, kid---”

“I’m not a _kid_ , Jorgan,” Kadin growled, standing and stalking across the room to snag Aric by the collar of his shirt. “I’m your _commanding officer_ , and you’re being a serious pain in my ass. Tavus surrendered, I accepted. Are you in the habit of murdering unarmed prisoners?”

“I’m in the habit of killing traitors,” Aric said. Kadin could feel his breath, hot and damp, against his mouth, and that made his belly warm and tighten, sending little shivers up his spine. Fuck, he was a kid, nineteen and flustered and not big enough for his boots. But he didn’t have to let Aric know that. 

“Go cool off, _lieutenant_ ,” Kadin said. “Dismissed.”

“Any kind of captain would see me court-martialed for---”

“ _Dismissed_.”

Aric shoved away from him, and the look he gave before he left made all the anger and fight flood out of his body. He looked _hurt_ , like he was something fragile that’d been broken, and not a lieutenant in the Havoc, the toughest and hardiest squad in the Republic military. Kadin wanted to call him back, to make some kind of peace between them, but he couldn’t. 

He had his post to think about. What would it look like if a commanding officer followed after a subordinate that had disrespected him so openly and brazenly? Aric had told him that he couldn’t coddle the people under him, that he had to use a firm hand. 

Kadin took his advice to heart.

****

“Want to apologize, sir,” Aric said, once more without announcing himself. Kadin looked towards the doorway and saw him standing there -- a little less sullen and hostile -- with his back stiff and straight, saluting. “I was out of line, and I apologize for questioning your decision and undermining your command.”

Kadin rose, marching across the short space between them with his arms folded behind his back. He stopped in front of Aric, and gave him a reassuring nod. “At ease, soldier,” he said, and the tension in the room immediately fled as Aric’s posture relaxed and his shoulders dropped.

“You blew your top, Jorgan,” Kadin said. “It happens. Not the first CO who had someone barking at them because they thought they fucked up.”

“No,” Aric agreed. “But the first CO _I_ ever barked at. Sir, I’m---”

“I get it,” Kadin interrupted. He clapped his hand on Aric’s shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. And he didn’t particularly care if it was coddling or not. “A lot of good people died because of what Tavus did. He’s a traitor, and a coward, and I wanted to put a bolt between his eyes. I get it. But he surrendered, and we’re better than him, Jorgan. We’re better than the Imps.”

“If they kill traitors, sir, I’d say they have the right of it.”

Kadin smirked. “No one ever said being the bigger man wasn’t inconvenient at times, lieutenant.”

Funny, he’d been closer to Aric earlier, when he’d seized him by his shirt and gotten in his face, but he hadn’t noticed how deeply dark his eyes were, or how his fangs peeked out from behind his lips, or how there were old scars at his temples, from where bolts had grazed him. Kadin realized that he was more than a decade and a half his junior, that he hadn’t lived through the kind of things Jorgan had, and that he couldn’t imagine what it had felt like to see everything he’d worked for drift like smoke through his clutching fingers. He’d given his life to the Republic, and all he really had to show for it was a demotion and to see the man who’d betrayed him given a pardon.

“Sir?”

Kadin realized he’d been staring rather intently at Aric’s face for the past minute, and flushed, looking away from him quickly. “Um, right. You, uh, don’t need to apologize, Jorgan, is what I meant to say. I want my squad to come to me and be honest with me. Just... maybe without baring their teeth at me, huh?”

He smiled, and he noticed that Aric’s eyes flicked to his lips for half a second.

_Fuck._

“Yes, sir,” Aric said. It rumbled through his chest, and sounded like a purr, and _fuck_ Kadin felt very suddenly and very powerfully like a nineteen year old kid, flustered and horny and needy. He licked his lips and stepped back from Aric, putting some much needed distance between them. When he couldn’t feel the heat coming off of his body, it was a little better.

“This isn’t a dictatorship,” Kadin continued. “Everyone gets a say here. Maybe that makes me a bad leader, but to be honest with you, I’d rather be a good friend than a good captain.”

He expected Aric to start in on him again about the importance of maintaining professionalism and distance from his subordinates, to go into a long, growling diatribe of the evils of mixing work and friendship, but amazingly, Aric smiled, and reached out his hand to him. “You’re both, sir,” he said, warmer than Kadin had ever heard him sound, and when Kadin touched his hand, he was once again overwhelmed by his want of him.

The thoughts were entirely unprofessional, and Kadin shoved them away. Aric was his XO, and there were rules about fraternization. 

Still, his fur was soft and warm, and the pad of his palm was a little rough. 

Kadin liked it.

“Figure that old CO had to be wrong,” Aric said. “Never did sit right with me, the idea that mercy is a bad thing.”

Kadin wanted to tell him that mercy was typically the first casualty of war, that it was trampled on and stomped into the dirt by men rougher and harder than the two of them. He wanted to tell Jorgan that mercy was the only thing that really separated them from the Imps, that it was the last noble thing that war couldn’t quite completely kill. 

But of course Aric knew all that.

“Go get some sleep, lieutenant,” Kadin said, giving Aric a quick salute. It was returned, and then Aric was gone, leaving Kadin with nothing but the warm memory of his hand in his, and the distinct, sobering feeling that his soft heart was going to get the whole lot of them killed.

Mercy _was_ like an unpinned grenade.

And Kadin was the one who had unpinned it.

**Author's Note:**

> I am in a puddle of my own kadin/aric feelings, it's fine, just leave me here. ;3;


End file.
